St. Cedd’s College

Here we are. St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge. Founded in the year something or other, by someone someone in honour of someone someone someone. In honour of someone who’s name escapes me completely.

Doctor Who is a bit like The Simpsons, really. The fanaticism is rife. And the amount of info available is absolutely mindblowing. I suppose that’s to be expected from a show first broadcast in 1963. Talking about broadcasting – Shada wasn’t. It was written and partially filmed but ultimately abandoned due to the strike action at the BBC in 1979 (an incident that also disrupted the release of the last episode of the second series of Fawlty Towers). Eventually it was patched up with new dialogue, animated elements and released in 2017.

Obviously not wanting the concept of St. Cedd’s to go completely to waste, writer Douglas Adams (of HHGTTG fame) recycled the place in his novel ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’ and it is loosely based on the real-life St. John’s College in Cambridge. It’s also the name a of a church in Borehamwood where he grew up, so kind of makes sense.

With all that in mind, you would naturally gravitate to the non-fictional Cambridge colleges. So that’s what I did. I discovered there was absolutely loads of them. Which I kind of new anyway. St. John’s itself didn’t particularly inspire me, so I went a bit rogue, swiped a general crest shape and did what I wanted. And what I wanted was a scarf in some way. On the basis that the Doctor (fourth iteration) was played by the much loved Tom Baker. Who, as anyone who has ever had any dabblings with Doctor Who, donned a very distinctive scarf.

So that’s the border dealt with. The inside? I don’t want to destroy the magic or anything, but that’s standard English run through an online Gallifreyan translator. A special prize* for whoever can decode it back to English. The innards of those normal crests are rich and varied, including bells, dragons, chevrons…a ship’s wheel? Sure, why not. So it seemed fair game to do whatever. Cheers.

If you’re wondering – Colin Baker was my first. So arguably the least liked one of the lot. Brilliant.

* Not really.